101–110 of 144 posts
In some of the essays she describes how before she was taught to communicate she had no inner monologue and didn’t even recognize herself as human. She was surprised to learn that the dog was not able to understand her. Language essentially gave her her mind, although the book does go into great detail about the things she perceived about the world through touch and exploration that few others would.
I knew a really great programmer. He was also a classical pianist (and unrelatedly an astronomer). Well anyway he wrote large entire programs with mostly two character variable names. He usually conceives entire programs in his head and would write them out using whatever symbols were still available. Most of the time, I would see him sitting and swaying in his office chair and maybe touching fingertips while looking…
I would say that this is the intuitive, naive way of starting coding if no one has taught you coding or you haven't had to care about maintainability or other people reading your code.
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What do you see when you close your eyes? Just light and colors? What about when you dream? I ask because there's done research suggesting visual hallucinations while sleeping helps maintain the visual cortex's proficiency. IIRC it was just contingent on visual stimuli. Sometimes as I fall asleep I see a very bright white light, so something like that can count. If you don't remember your dreams it might be interesti…
Not the guy you are asking, but when I close eyes there is only black. If try to imagine let's say apple, maybe it's there at opacity of 0.5% or less. But requires mental effort. No inner monologue as well. Dreams on the other hand are very vivid, sometimes I feel like I am physically there so I can smell, feel cold etc.
In the family of my maternal grandfather there are many individuals who are much better at science but have difficulty with language (often in combination with dyslexia) in school. I have some evidence that those individuals (myself included) have a significant higher non-verbal IQ (20 to 30 points) than verbal IQ as categorized by the WISC-V intelligence tests. I often struggle to express my ideas with words. When I…
I can relate. May ask you how your relation with AI tools is? I tend to find myself translating my mental model into natural language, to have a machine convert it into code, then reading that code back to mental model. It's unnerving. It feels much more natural writing my mental model directly into code.
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I dream in images but have only once in my life seen anything but darkness or vague abstract patterns with no connection to imagery with my eyes closed in a waking state. I don't remember my dreams longer than a few seconds after waking up. Just reaching for a pen would be too slow. But I have a persistent inner monologue that only ever stops with effort when I sit down to meditate.
> I don't remember my dreams longer than a few seconds after waking up. Just reaching for a pen would be too slow. FWIW, this gets better after practice
In the family of my maternal grandfather there are many individuals who are much better at science but have difficulty with language (often in combination with dyslexia) in school. I have some evidence that those individuals (myself included) have a significant higher non-verbal IQ (20 to 30 points) than verbal IQ as categorized by the WISC-V intelligence tests. I often struggle to express my ideas with words. When I…
I can relate. May ask you how your relation with AI tools is? I tend to find myself translating my mental model into natural language, to have a machine convert it into code, then reading that code back to mental model. It's unnerving. It feels much more natural writing my mental model directly into code.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you see when you close your eyes? Just light and colors? What about when you dream? I ask because there's done research suggesting visual hallucinations while sleeping helps maintain the visual cortex's proficiency. IIRC it was just contingent on visual stimuli. Sometimes as I fall asleep I see a very bright white light, so something like that can count. If you don't remember your dreams it might be interesti…
It’s odd, I experience aphantasia in the way that I am a words thinker, able to talk with myself, the whole 5 miles. But I am also able to have very vivid dreams, given that I sleep at the right time, around 22:00 - 24:00 and being sufficiently tired also seems to help. They seem very real when I am dreaming them but when I wake up I can remember the thoughts of imagery but can’t recall any real images or pictures or…
It’s actually something very interesting about the function of dreaming in the brain that this is the case. That there’s such insane variability in the structure of conscious experience and memory, but the imagistic quality of dreaming fulfills a necessary role for all. I’ve read reputable studies that suggest it’s crucial for learning, something similar to training on synthetic data.
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> I don't remember my dreams longer than a few seconds after waking up. Just reaching for a pen would be too slow. FWIW, this gets better after practice
How? I've tried writing it down many times over the years, but never recalled anything by the time I've been able to pick up anything to write with. Not a word.
This is one of those things that you don't really tend to think about (pun not intended!) until you experience a change in your thinking or meet someone who thinks like you do! > If we can avoid the compression step, and do the manipulations directly in the high-dimensional, non-linguistic, conceptual space, we can move much faster With my neurodivergent brain I've always conducted my thoughts in an "uncompressed for…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What do you see when you close your eyes? Just light and colors? What about when you dream? I ask because there's done research suggesting visual hallucinations while sleeping helps maintain the visual cortex's proficiency. IIRC it was just contingent on visual stimuli. Sometimes as I fall asleep I see a very bright white light, so something like that can count. If you don't remember your dreams it might be interesti…
I dream in images but have only once in my life seen anything but darkness or vague abstract patterns with no connection to imagery with my eyes closed in a waking state. I don't remember my dreams longer than a few seconds after waking up. Just reaching for a pen would be too slow. But I have a persistent inner monologue that only ever stops with effort when I sit down to meditate.